There are many things that being a Doctor Who fan teaches you. Never be cruel to a scary looking alien, for example, as it will inevitably transpire that said alien is a misunderstood analogy for xenophobia and was only trying to help. Similarly, never to trust a cute looking alien as it will inevitably transpire that they’re deliberately manipulating you in order to eat your flesh. Always tell someone your name at the first sign of danger and get as much of your back story out as possible, lest you suffer the fate of the unspeaking extra. I could go on.

However, the main lesson for any Whovian is to pay attention, because what may appear to be simply out of place will secretly have an ominous score playing in the background, foreshadowing the huge significance it is sure to have.

My point is that the world is clearly about to end.

Think about it. You’re sitting in the park, or at the beach, eating an ice cream and adjusting your sunglasses, when you spot a newspaper out of the corner of your eye. It’s not the headline that leaps out at you, but the date – October 2nd? Ominous trumpets. You look around you at the insects going mental, like tipsy teenagers trying to decide whether they’re going out out, and the music grows darker. You see a billboard for Next or River Island, trying to sell you the sort of fashionable coat you should be considering at this time of the year, and even looking at it makes you feel uncomfortably hot. Something is going on.

If you shrug your shoulders at this point then I’m sorry to have to tell you, but you’ll be person still denying the existence of aliens as one shoots you in the head. You gon die. If, however, you’re intrigued (and female) then you may just be The Doctors next companion, all you have to do is investigate further.

You think back, trying to remember anything else that seemed off. Time for a blue tinted flashback, to the election – a suave politician, so carefully put together that he’s the first politician ever to be impervious to caricature. The guy whose policies you no longer remember and who you’d never heard of before he took the unelectable party to power. Was that Harold Saxon or Nick Clegg? Thinking back now, that doesn’t seem too likely…

You consider then what has happened since. The emotional rollercoaster of 2011. Who would have thought that in this more cynical age people would have been quite so excited, for such a length of time, over the royal wedding. Who would have thought that society would suddenly collapse, one random night in August, and no one would know why….

Another thing Doctor Who teaches you – if there is no other explanation, or if the explanation is a shady conspiracy theory sponsored by the government, it’s aliens. Always.

Then there’s David Cameron. Now you look, he does have the cold, dead eyes of a cyborg or a clone or a human body possessed by a sentient force. That might explain why he randomly malfunctions and spouts advertising slogans. Why he doesn’t appear to be aging.

Here’s my theory. The freak snowstorms of January and the impossible Indian summer now are the result of atmospheric disturbance caused by tiny alien life forms falling to earth. These tiny aliens have banded together to form a Nick Clegg, who chose David Cameron as the politician whose soul it would be easiest to carve out and use as a puppet. The reason? They come from a planet whose primary exports are the materials used to make banners. It explains why the Conservatives have suddenly piped up in support of gay marriage – anything that might lead to a march of some kind. Whatever this government does, however incongruous or contradictory, whether it’s throwing a party or destroying whole sections of society, out come the banners. It’s the only common link.